Already 7 of the top 10 pieces of software sold are games, and games also dominate 8 of the top 10 slots for free software downloaded. Browsing the store showed some heavies testing the waters (EA, Sega, Hudson, Namco) and a couple of titles from each of the long-established Mac shareware developers (Ambrosia, PangeaSoft, Freeverse).

Most of the games at this point appear to be traditionally mediocre and derivative launch titles, and its disappointing that the old-school Mac devs are mostly just spewing out their own Soduku and Blackjack clones instead of leveraging their top titles like Escape Velocity and Wingnuts to establish an early and strong presence.

iPint was entertaining for a few minutes, though I had more fun with the filled pint glass than in the actual game itself.

Cube Runner is mildly entertaining and at the very least a good tech demo of what could be possible. I'm going to keep it on the phone for a little while longer for when I want some random quick entertainment but don't want to tear me hair out.

The hair tearing out will come when I grab Monkey Ball tomorrow. It looks great, but I shudder when I think of what it might do to my phone's battery life. I'll probably grab Enigmo tomorrow as well.

One thing that strikes me in a lot of the gameplay videos I've seen is how holding the iPhone horizontally apparently allows for fairly natural thumb "buttons" in the lower corners of the screen. That's gotta be a good sign, though I wonder how far a dev can take it (one button per corner? two? simulated D-pad?) without there being any tactile feedback.

Monkey Ball is great. It looks better than the DS version and is more fun to control. I still haven't gotten the hang of it but it's still fun. regardless. I am a huge SMB fan so this may be colored.

Bomberman is hard to control. I haven't gotten the hang of the controls. Do I keep my thumb in place and tilt it up and to the left/right to move, like a virtual NES pad? Or do I slide it over in each direction? Neither really seems to work well. I've died too many times on the first board.

The Ambrosia card games are not too good. There's very little polish, settings screens will pop up over another and be in the wrong orientation. The animations are slow even at the "fast" setting. The controls (sliding cards) are hard and picking a single card in a stack is slow and clunky.

Let's just say that when you're the high-profile President of an up-and-coming software company, you want to put on a good face to the public instead of blatantly trolling message boards with fanboy fodder...

Anywho, just swung by my local Rogers Wireless shop in Toronto. They had stock but the activation servers were down, as was Rogers' own internal system . Then, despite being an existing customer in good standing for three years, they wouldn't let me reserve a unit, get on a list, put down a deposit, or let me activate the phone myself at home later through iTunes (same instructions as the wireless carrier is using are on the web). So that was a bit lame. Not that I expected otherwise.

Originally posted by gardenhose:Bomberman is hard to control. I haven't gotten the hang of the controls. Do I keep my thumb in place and tilt it up and to the left/right to move, like a virtual NES pad? Or do I slide it over in each direction? Neither really seems to work well. I've died too many times on the first board.

You put your thumb anywhere on the screen except the bomb button, then move it just a little bit and hold it in the new position for as long as you'd like to move. Lift your thumb to stop, or move it a couple millimeters in another direction to change directions.

I actually found it to be very intuitive. No fiddly little button area to mess with or horrible tilt controls. It is a little oversensitive IMO (it should ignore minuscule movements), but it's nothing that can't be fixed with a little tweaking.

Trism is really a great piece of software. At first is seems really simple -- sliding rows of triangles to match the colors up. But you can (and should) change the orientation of the phone as pieces are destroyed and new ones fall in, in order to fill as many gaps as possible and create chains. The challenge is that the more you play, the more locked and bomb pieces pop onto the board, and have to be cleared. Eventually you get too many to handle, and hit game over.

Trism sports 3 play modes, a comprehensive tutorial, scoreboard and achievements(!), plus slick visuals and sound effects. The more I play, the more amazed I am that it only costs $5.

Originally posted by aC:This might not be the best place to ask, but my cousin is picking up a 3G iPhone, and is offering me his iPhone for $100.

Now the key is I don't have AT&T, nor do I plan on getting them. Does anyone know if everything functions normally without any phone service so long as WiFi is present?

I'd like to get it as an iPod touch + web browser/maps in hotspots and just want to be sure it will work properly if I do so.

It's in really good condition so I don't see $100 as a bad deal.

As stated before, it does, and it's actually a bit of a step up from the touch, as it has a speaker that can play music without headphones (albeit relatively quietly), and voice recording capability which I don't believe the touch has.

$100 is a great deal, as I see 4GB 1st gens in only moderate shape going for well over twice that.

Originally posted by iconmaster:Haven't played it yet, but Aurora Feint is getting some great reviews.

It's a pretty fun game, and it seems in depth enough. Almost like Jewel quest.

Which, speaking of Jewel Quest, needs to be put on this thing.

I just can't wait for some rpg's.

The dice poker game is overly addicting. It has achievements, unlockables, everything.

Over 4 days, I checked and have about 5 and a half hours played in the poker game. Majority is while I am out and about and waiting to do something for a few minutes here and there. It's a great game though.

Yeah I hoped it was implied that this is already activated (and currently still being used) on an AT&T network. So unless there was some kind of lockdown code after so long of inactivity on the network, I hoped it would be fine.

Originally posted by aC:Yeah I hoped it was implied that this is already activated (and currently still being used) on an AT&T network. So unless there was some kind of lockdown code after so long of inactivity on the network, I hoped it would be fine.

I'd make sure he upgrades it to the software 2.0 before he deactivates it -- and be careful about upgrading in the future. Mine still has to reactivate itself when I upgrade the OS on it.

Originally posted by aC:Yeah I hoped it was implied that this is already activated (and currently still being used) on an AT&T network. So unless there was some kind of lockdown code after so long of inactivity on the network, I hoped it would be fine.

I'd make sure he upgrades it to the software 2.0 before he deactivates it -- and be careful about upgrading in the future. Mine still has to reactivate itself when I upgrade the OS on it.

Already confirmed that he did yesterday

EDIT: But I'd hope if they even bother to upgrade again that there'd be a crack.

Still want to get an arcade-type game, but I'm torn between Ms. Pac-Man (sounds fun, but a bit overpriced) and Crash Nitro Kart (which supposedly has frame rate problems). But I might as well pace myself before I go overboard...

Originally posted by aC:Yeah I hoped it was implied that this is already activated (and currently still being used) on an AT&T network. So unless there was some kind of lockdown code after so long of inactivity on the network, I hoped it would be fine.

I'd make sure he upgrades it to the software 2.0 before he deactivates it -- and be careful about upgrading in the future. Mine still has to reactivate itself when I upgrade the OS on it.

Already confirmed that he did yesterday

EDIT: But I'd hope if they even bother to upgrade again that there'd be a crack.

I'm hoping there is this time too. It seems like a big oversight on Apple's part after saying that you'd be able to keep your old iPhone as a Touch...when the Touch can be updated to 2.0 (albeit with a small fee) and a deactivated iPhone apparently can't at this moment.

Motion X poker is really nice. simple but tilting it and watching the shadows change is pretty satisfying. just a tight little dice/poker game. I had the pool game for my hacked iPod and it was nice enough. The balls don't rotate and there's no spin adjustment which is a little annoying but it's fun nonetheless.

Also, I bought Scrabble and it's really nice. A little wonky on the controls occasionally but much nicer than playing it on Facebook

FF7 or FF Tactics/Disgaea would be perfect games for the iPhone. I can't wait for some good turn-based RPG action.

Enigmo and Cubes (written by MrNSX, an Arsian) get most of my iPhone playtime. Once Tap Tap Revolution gets a few more songs I'll go back to playing that until I get bored of the tracks.

Aurora Feint is installed but I've done little more than create a game and hit the first tutorial level. What I've seen so far is impressive but I haven't really been in a situation where I have time to sit down and explore it.

I personally think that Monkey Ball is ridiculous. I love the Monkey Ball games on the Gamecube, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to control this one. It is insanely frustrating. Not in the "this is a really hard level" way but in the "I can't even figure out how to do the basics" way. Very dissapointing.

The big problem is I can't figure out how to make the ball not move at all. On the GC you just don't touch the stick and you don't move (unless you're on a hill of course) but when I put my iPhone flat on a desk it still wants to go one way or another. I'm having a damn hard time steering too. Ah well.

Originally posted by donutogre:I personally think that Monkey Ball is ridiculous. I love the Monkey Ball games on the Gamecube, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to control this one. It is insanely frustrating. Not in the "this is a really hard level" way but in the "I can't even figure out how to do the basics" way. Very dissapointing.

The big problem is I can't figure out how to make the ball not move at all. On the GC you just don't touch the stick and you don't move (unless you're on a hill of course) but when I put my iPhone flat on a desk it still wants to go one way or another. I'm having a damn hard time steering too. Ah well.

It takes some practice for sure. To start hold the phone almost flat but slightly tipped to you for view-ability. On the first level, I recommend practicing _not_ moving the ball. Once you figure out the phone position to not move, that is where you need to start. (That's really the hardest part.)

Once you figure out how not to move, now you can practice moving. Move _very_ slightly in the direction you want to move and do it gradually. I mean like maybe a cm total move of the phone is usually enough.

Monkey Ball is all about momentum, the more momentum the less control you have, so you need to focus on controlling momentum. If you're making drastic moves all the time trying to self correct you're doing it wrong. Every movement should be gradual, controlled, smooth moves and you will get to the goals. Kind of like driving a car on black ice.

- Does respect your silenced ringer setting.- Unskippable 10-15 second intro animation.- I've loaded it up 4 times, it's crashed 3 of those.- CPU's word choice isn't weighted by actual English frequency, so you end up with all these random words you've never heard of on the screen.